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The normally quiet almond industry has suddenly found itself struggling with a food producer's worst nightmare: a salmonella outbreak that has sickened more than two dozen people and prompted a nationwide recall.

Federal regulators have received reports of 25 people falling ill, most likely from raw almonds supplied by Paramount Farms in California, which grows its almonds in the heart of California's Central Valley. Paramount has voluntarily recalled 13 million pounds of raw almonds. The size of the recall announced this past week is likely to grow as federal investigators continue to ...

tecumseh:
a fugus like organism commonly associated with grain. can be quite common on 'deer corn' here in texas according to one of mizz tecumseh professional associates (who determined one year 100% of the samples he took from throughout texas were tainted with aphlotoxin). it has been suggested that aphloxin on rye grass seed was the cause of much of the witch burning in europe and the first lsd-25 was extracted from this product. a black light is 'commonly' used to detect aphlotoxin contamination in grain.

Ergot Poisoning - the cause of the Salem Witch Trials

The trouble in Salem began during the cold dark Massachusetts winter, January, 1692. Eight young girls began to take ill, begining with 9-year-old Elizabeth Parris, the daughter of Reverend Samuel Parris, as well as his niece, 11-year-old Abigail Williams. But theirs was a strange sickness: the girls suffered from delirium, violent convulsions, incomprehensible speech, trance-like states, and odd skin sensations. The worried villagers searched desperately for an explanation. Their conclusion: the girls were under a spell, bewitched — and, worse yet, by members of their own pious community.

And then the finger pointing began. The first to be accused were Tituba, Parris's Caribbean-born slave, along with Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn, two elderly women considered of ill repute. All three were arrested on February 29. Ultimately, more than 150 "witches" were taken into custody; by late September 1692, 20 men and women had been put to death, and five more accused had died in jail. None of the executed confessed to witchcraft. Such a confession would have surely spared their lives, but, they believed, condemned their souls.

On October 29, by order of Massachusetts Governor Sir William Phips, the Salem witch trials officially ended. When the dust cleared, the townsfolk and the accusers were at a loss to explain their own actions. In the centuries since, scholars and historians have struggled as well to explain the madness that overtook Salem. Was it sexual repression, dietary deficiency, mass hysteria? Or, could a simple fungus have been to blame?
Regards,
Ernie